NEWS & PRESS

The RAS has concluded an agreement which will move the Society's journals to a new publisher, Oxford University Press (OUP). The new publication contract was signed by representatives of the RAS and OUP at Burlington House on 27 June. OUP will take over from the current publishers, Wiley-Blackwell, from January 2013.

From left to right: Prof. Mike Cruise (RAS Treasurer), Tim Barton (Managing Director, Global Academic Publishing, OUP) and Pamela Mortimer (RAS Executive Secretary) at the signing of the new contract.

All of the Society's journals will be affected by the move: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (MNRAS; including MNRAS Letters), Geophysical Journal International (GJI) and Astronomy & Geophysics (A&G). The transition is expected to be seamless for authors, referees and subscribers.

Professor David Southwood, President of the Royal Astronomical Society, commented: "Scientific communication with sound peer review and effective production and distribution is an essential component of research in astronomy and geophysics and lies at the very heart of RAS activity. I look forward to a long and productive partnership with OUP that will help us continue to deliver that aim."

Ian Russell, Editorial Director for Science at Oxford University Press, said: "The Royal Astronomical Society is at the centre of the tremendously exciting fields of astronomy and geophysics and their journals are renowned the world over. We are therefore absolutely delighted to have been selected by the RAS to work with them to further develop their important and influential journals and to have such high-quality titles joining our collection. We are very much looking forward to working with the Society to ensure the continued success of their publishing and to ensure that their titles are the journals of choice for the best research in their fields and provide even better value for subscribers."